We Are Called to Contribute
Robert Patterson
As I sit down to write this, the world seems to be falling apart. A global pandemic. A world-famous knee to the neck for almost nine minutes. Protests. Riots. Big city shooting sprees. Even a biblical cloud of dust from the Sahara.
What better time to point out that on every important measure of human welfare, things are better than they have ever been. And not by a little but by a lot. For all the facts and charts backing this statement up, just refer to the book Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker. There is no dispute about the facts. It is truly an amazing time to be alive. It is only myopia and an evolutionary penchant to compound fear and overestimate danger that keep us from seeing our amazing human progress.
And why are things better? Easy:
- Education, science, reason, and institutions that further all of them
- The spread of democracy, that puts the people in charge and makes leaders our employees, not our masters
- Markets, enterprise, and investment, generally referred to as capitalism
All of these forces started to take off in the 1800s, and the snowball effect has been tremendous. These forces have combined to generate enormous societal wealth, solve problems, and increase human flourishing. Our problems are now mainly around better distributing this largess, which is a much better problem to have than scraping out a meager, illiterate existence from the occasional good harvest and praying that in our few short years on earth we are not afflicted by the death of an infant, death in childbirth, starvation, an incurable infection or disease, or marauding enemies, just to name a few challenges that used to accompany everyday existence.
Huge problems remain. But our past success in climbing from the mire should give us great hope that we will continue to trade our current problem sets for better problem sets. For example, the forces listed above have so lowered the cost of nutrition that now the biggest health issue among America’s poor is obesity. Never before in human history has obesity been a problem for the poor. But it is now. We have traded pervasive and devastating levels of hunger, malnutrition, and starvation for obesity. Now let’s work to trade obesity for wishing that the line at the fitness center were shorter.
And how do we continue to promote human flourishing? By the continued application of education, science, reason, democracy, and capitalism.
And what does this have to do with us? Plenty. As graduates of Stanford Business School, we have been empowered to solve problems and create wealth and, in turn, share that wealth through investment, philanthropy, spending, and taxation. Our work and success in whatever field we have chosen benefits humanity, not just our bank account. You can feel proud of your contributions to humanity. And I encourage you to advocate for the ever-greater availability around the world of the forces that actually advance human welfare.
In addition to any “work-based contribution” I have made to date, I now feel called to identify a specific societal problem and make a special effort to help address that problem. For me, this problem is addressing the great disparity between white and black income and family wealth. I am exploring, reading, and thinking quite a bit about this problem. If anyone is interested, we can make it a group study – and group action.
